Any plans to possibly change Elemental Weapons to a Percent of the shaman's stats rather than a percent of the base bonus on the spell?

My questions are PvP/arena based from a resto point of view. I have no issues in PvE other than Mana Tide being terrible, not that mana is ever an issue in PvE. I needs to give the caster 100% more mana than everyone else.

1. When are resto shaman going to be a viable arena healer?
According to sk-gaming, there are more disc priests, resto druids, holy paladins, ret paladins, hybrid paladins(32/0/39 presumably) and prot-healing spec paladins before resto shaman in 2v2.
In 3v3, the same applies except for prot-healing paladins.
The same applies in 5v5 except for resto druids who have always suffered in a 5v5 setting.
My sugestion? Fix Nature's Guardian. Give it a damage reduction portion similar to Elemental Warding and move Elemental Warding deeper into the elemental tree, OR just make the timer back to 5 seconds.

2. Why are we allowed to use shields when melee rip us up harder than almost every class. We have the armor to "tank" melee, but that's all we can do. Tank. We have no means of escape other than a 45-second cooldown. Other classes have other means of escape with shorter cooldowns (freedom, fear, root/cyclone)

3. Grounding totem. This spell is so outdated at this point in the game it is hardly worth casting. Since BC when spells like Ice Lance were made, and the amount of instant casts has probably doubled since Vanilla WoW, Grounding Totem is hardly worth the time to cast except in a 1v1 setting. The game isn't balanced around 1v1, so why is that the only time the totem makes an impact?
I suggest bringing it back to it's Vanilla WoW glory where it needed a direct damage spell to break it, and would absorb a non-DD spell every eight seconds.

4. Dispel resistance. This mechanic in general needs to be revamped. Most classes have a 30% dispel resistance talent but it's not working. Classes like druids, and priests have many many magical buffs they get when attacked and put on targets in terms of HoTs, shields, etc. Shaman have a very small amount in comparison to them. Earth Shield and Heroism are the two that really matter, riptide and tidal waves procs are small enough, and NS/Tidal force gets used quick enough to not matter.
I suggest either adding a dispel resistance mechanic to Improved Earth Shield (an additional 7/15 or 15/30% resistance) or revamping the mechanic to work based on the number of magic buffs/debuffs on a target.

5. HoT healing - please stop trying to turn shaman into HoT healers with riptide. I like riptide. Sort of. It's a crappy version of Holy Shock with a nice buff (Tidal Waves). The glyph shouldn't increase the HoT time, it should increase the direct heal or some other effect.

Nothing really knew can be brought up as far as mechanics/survivability/utility that hasn't been hashed over by countless other players.

Without any spoilers, or setting unreal expectations that could only lead to broken hearts I ask this:






"Is there a time "soon" (yes ghostcrawler, I knew it's your favorite term) that we can hope to see changes to the class?"







I feel as though 3.1 was a step in the right direction and that everyone at blizzard does hear and see our pleas. I feel as though we wont be left out, but a shred of hope would go a long way for a lot of people at this point.

I understand you are very hesitant to make promises or talk about changes that aren't set in stone, and I think a vast majority understand that.


Can we all get along? Make a compromise? Maybe you can share some information of what you guys are thinking..... if we PROMISE to not come back in a month and say "Blue said Y, and QQ it's X"?



Thanks!

As a resto spec shaman speaking from the pvp side of the game...

Will there be any changes to address mana efficiency?
As of right now shamans have the worst mana efficiency of any healer in the game at the moment. This could be due the the lack of defensive abilities resto shamans have forcing us to sit with earth shield or it could be from being balanced around water shield. Are there any plans to address the lackluster mana efficiency of shamans?

Resto spec shamans are the only healer in the game with out a bail out ability of some sort to lower damage intake on a cool down. Paladins, of course, have divine shield, priests have pain suppression or guardian spirit, and druids have barkskin. Any plans to address how easily shamans can be focus fired down?

The totem system is the most archaic technology in the game. It is extremely clunky and the most easily countered ability set in the game. Paladins have seen numerous overhauls to their seal system and still shamans are stuck with the current totem system. Any inside peaks as to what we can see changing with them?

1. The burning question of every shaman The totem system is igoing to be changed. By changed i mean: Mobilitiy, Utility, or Purpose. It seems to lack all three right now. (PVE/PVP question)

2. Enhancement Survivability and Utility in PVP. it is going to be changed or even given a thought.(PVP)

3. HP pools why are they so low. (PVP)

4. Why are shamans the only class who have heard the excuse or reasoning you can't have this ability because it is a Unqiue or Iconoic ability of class X. Yet almost all shamans Unqiue and Iconic abilities have been bleed out to other classes? (General)

5. Why can't shamans use sword. I know that would really upset itemization for every other class but it would solve alot of problems IMO. (PVE)

6. Why did you make us so dependant on Dual weilding when in Reg wow our hay days were 2 handing maces and melting peoples faces with windfury crits. (PVP)

7. Are you ever going to take Totems off the GCD. It has been a horse beaten to death and I know you guys don't want us to macro four totems together and spam but Come on it along time coming. It needs to be done. (General)

8. If Your are going to spread out all the buffs. Where is shaman raid utility going to come from and as much as you want us to believe Blood lust/Heroism is not a good enough buff to make shamans indispensible. I know from raid experence it's nice to have not nessary. (PVE)

9. What was the point of shifting the cooldown/debuff timer or Sated and Bloodlust/heroism. I mean really what did that do? Not very many fights last 5 mintues so wtf? (PVE)

10. Are you going to give more elementals or increase the usefulness of the elementals we have. Cause right now frankly fire and earth elemental are pretty sub-par. (PVE)


11. This one I didn't want to put in cause well it is just pith but hey what the heck. Why is it that 2 year worth of suggestion and complaints about enhancement and shamans ultimately just distilled into the class that is now the DK? I mean seriously I look at the DK class and i go Hey that is all the stuff I have been asking for enhancement since I started playing this game. Shouldn't we have like Senority or something? I thought blizzard was Union Lol. (PVP)

The biggest Shaman PvP Ability is undoubtedly Water Shield.

Are there plans to adjust how this ability works? Especially given the tendency of Shaman/Melee teams to play games of "how many times can I attempt to drink in a match, must to be hit by an attack to be kept in combat?" and "look how many times I can drink/combat exploit!".

In my mind, everything for Shaman mana efficiency starts and ends at Water Shield: it's mind-numbingly overpowered against anyone that attempts to attack the Shaman but doesn't have the ability to straight-out kill them.

Basically: Shaman in PvP are defined by "look at me drink" and "where did I hide my totems". It's aggravating for everyone involved.

I am a Resto Shaman on Mug'thol, I PvP as well as PvE. In PvE my concerns are few, we tend to do decent healing, and really I just cannot keep up with the druids, however I find my mana regeneration and endurance in these fights are quite good. We also hold some great utility in a couple Ulduar fights, so truly it is not too bad. Perhaps I would like to see some changes made in regards to CH to make it par with CoH, but I think they are close to even.

When I look at PvP though, and I have quite a few concerns. With regards to every other healer, Shamans are clearly the weakest in arena. I will not state numbers or any such thing, but our representation is clearly low. Mostly though, I am concerned with mana efficiency. When coming into arena, in PvP gear I hold around 15k mana, which is pretty decent and on par with most other healers in my bracket. My issues come here:

1. All other classes have some way to regen a massive amount of mana with little to no effort. For example, a priest has shadowfiend and hymn of hope. Shadowfiend can restore a massive amount of mana when used effectively. A second is innervate, which previously could restore a druids full mana bar, with the changes however this may not be the case anymore. Druids also have a massive advantage of instant cast heals, allowing them to dodge in and out of LoS with their heals and easily dropping combat. Finally Paladins have Divine Plea, which is the worst of the above listed, and truly I have not issue with this ability, however their Flash of Light spell is less then HALF the mana cost of Lesser Healing Wave, and given that paladins are inherently more tanky, they have much more time to be able to use Divine Plea.

Shamans have two abilities, first we have Mana Tide. Tide gives use at max 26% of our mana back, for our three minute cool down restoration ability. Besides this being completely sub par to EVERY other restoration ability for other classes, it can be killed with a white hit, or an instant cast, completely removing the ability. Water Shield is our second ability, and I have no qualms with Water Shield currently, but it does not make up for anything because it only works while we are being hit. Teams quickly OOM a shaman and then ignore him and put massive pressure on their partner. Effectively this turns off water shield and we have nothing else besides drinks at this point.

2. Our CC consists of Hex, which is a decent spell, and does not deserve any changes at this point. However, we are lacking in comparison to other healers. Druids have Cyclone, a repeatable spell, just as good in many respects. They also have roots, a very easy way to peel melee off of them. Paladins have Hammer/Repentance and with that new spec they even have a silence. Priest's fear, while not quite the same as Hex, it is AoE and on a faster cooldown. Thinking back, -all- of the CCs are on quicker cooldowns.

I don't like to complain that other classes are "OP" in comparison, I merely think we are lacking to the others. My main concern is honestly the mana efficiency, it really holds a lot of us back when fighting teams of equal skill level.

Is anything being done to address the concerns I listed?
Thanks for the Q&A post.

I realize you are asking for questions but I just wanted to drop a suggestion or two about the totem issue...

1.) Please take off the GCD. Instead, add a 1 second CD for the type of totem. This would allow us to make a set of totems that we can cast all at once with 1 click, and still not be able to spam them. Additionally, removing from the GCD means that we don't waste valuable time dropping totems when we could be casting spells.

2.) Buffs in general to totems. Totems used to make sense the way they worked. With every other class's buffs they don't anymore. Either make totem buffs much stronger, or drastically increase the range of the buff totems and duration.

3.) Totem stomping. I just wanted to say that, I am aware it's already on your to-do list.

As far as itemization goes. I don't necessarily think shaman need swords, but it would be great if we could see more spell DPS maces or even spell DPS fist weapons. In other words, something for the elemental and/or resto shaman that ISN'T for locks and mages. Also, stats better suited to shamans would be nice.

1. can resto get some sort of escape mechanism like elemental and enhance got?

2. can you increase our base hp so we are not the lowest class, it really stinks being melee and having less hp than a mage, and no I don't want to spend talent points for this change?

3. can you redesign mana tide so it is not garbage?

4. can you give us a glyph to make riptide a little more useful in pvp and possibly even PVE?

5. can you explain why our healing throughput is so much lower than others?

6. can you figure out how to make elemental/enhance PVP viable?

7. can we get some extra dispel resistance for earth shield or make them have to dispel each charge? all of our healing is based around earth shield and having it dispelled kills that healing.

8. can we get a snare/root breaker added on to ghostwolf? ok so now I am dreaming but maybe this could answer #1

9. basically can we get a little love for resto pvp so that we are not so miserably under-representated versus the other 3 healer classes.

10. for PVE can you quit putting in so many melee unfriendly fights. I mean seriously, every fight in Ulduar is run in/ run out run in run out. oops forgot to run out DEAD.

11. can we get SOMETHING to stop totem stomping.

12. can we get another 1-2k hp added to the stoneclaw glyph?


there are some very good threads in the forums right now with great ideas to solve all of our current problems.


in my opinion
enhance - balanced in PVE terrible in PVP not ever sure you can fix them in PVP
elemental - balanced with the recent hotfix in PVE pretty bad in PVP but fixable with a few more tweaks (figure out how to nerf melee)
resto - underpowered in PVE, they have no role and their heals are below all other classes. almost balanced in PVP with a few survivability tweaks and a little more throughput/efficiency in healing.

1.) How do you plan to fix shaman's survivability in pvp??

2.) How do you plan to fix resto's mana efficiency and horrible mana return??

Now that Blizzard has decided it's acceptable for the strongest raid healers to have multiple insta-casts and a 40-yard range on their AoEs, what plans to you have to address the range and mobility issues handicapping resto shaman? The trade-off for us was fewer tools, inefficiency, and immobility in exchange for strong, if situational, raid healing. If others needn't make such sacrifices in order to get Nice Things, we shouldn't have to either.

First off, I'd just like to say THANK YOU for coming out with something like this to help the classes (not just the Shaman, but it's nice that we seem to be getting the first swing at you :] )
Now, down to it:

Totems

You guys have said a few things about fixing/changing them but what do you actually have in store? Any hints/ideas for us? We'd love anything at this point

Elemental Itemization

This is a problem many of us elemental shaman are running into. It seems like everything has spirit or mp5 on it. As elemental, we have no use for either. Why are there so few mail pieces and weapons (that shaman can use) in Ulduar with just spellpower, haste, crit and/or hit? Even a few leather/cloth pieces without spirit would be welcome, since every 'Elemental Shaman' itemized mail piece is going to be vultured by Holy Paladins at the first chance they get. I'm personally only concerned with 10 man Ulduar since my guild can't do 25m and the server can't support PuGs for it yet. I'm obviously not asking you to go back and add more items just for us, but any ideas why this is the case?

Rings also seem to be a big problem. There were (last I checked):

0 rings from 10 man Ulduar without MP5 or Spirit
2 rings from 25 man Ulduar without MP5 or Spirit
2 necks in 10 man Ulduar without MP5 or Spirit
0 necks from 25 man Ulduar without MP5 or Spirit

For a 25 man guild that's not too bad since they can do both. But as somebody in a 10 man guild, how am I supposed to upgrade my rings in Ulduar? The only upgrade outside Ulduar is from 25m Kel'Thuzzad. So I ask...what gives?

Anyway...that's all I can think of for now. Thank you for your time :)

PVE
Enhancment
Weapons?
Reson: rarity and conflict with other classes that take higher priority *yes I realise priority is up to the guild but we're already approaching uslessness with DKs being able to mimic our totems.

Biggest Concern right now would be lack of Weapons for enhance, rightnow our only options as pointed out earlier in the thread conflict heavily with rogues, mainly fist weapons as Combat Fists is one of the highest DPS specs for rogues at this time they have high priority over us basically meaning we have to wait and wait and wait.

there is currently ONE weapon in both Naxx25 and Ulduar 25 that does not conflict with rogues and that is Angry Dread and the Hammer from Thorim 2 items out of almost 40weapons seems a bit rough, the alternative to this is of course off of Yogg on 10man, wich parses have shown the 1haxe is horrible compared to the equal level Fist/mace weapons...so we're either stuck waiting forever for an upgrade or stuck using Heroic drop/crafted junk items untill doomsday. Perhapse a nice non unique 171DPS 2.6 speed 1haxe from the conqest vendor hmm? Or open up more options to Enhance shamans since rightnow your screwing us on our weapons.

The best alternative for this IMO is do with weapons what you did with armor for the basic Ilvl weapons from an instance, make them tokens...1h tanking or agi token, 1hspelltoken 2h str or agi token 1hspelltoken, make a viable choice for multiple class/specs it'd come down to 3 or 4 items available per token, while still having your BiS items drop from later bosses in the instance...

For example a 2hstr or agi token
You'd have a 2h polearm with proper stats for a Hunter/feral ( agi crit AP ect )
a 2h Axe with DK/Pal/War stats ( Str crit hit )
the 1h tanking or agi token could have somthing like
a fast Offhand Dagger
a Slow 1h Fist
a fast Str/sta/defense weapon
a 1.8speed dagger

PvE: I'd like to know if there's plans on making shaman a more mobile healer. I have no problem with moving or dodging AoE but riptide isn't exactly gonna keep you tank up while your positionning.

Priest get out of our shaman thread D:

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Q u o t e:


You understate how powerful (especially to casters) Wind Shock and Grounding Totem are as CC's. A shaman/x team is almost automatically a hard counter to Mages and Warlocks, just by being able to shock and ground so much of their damage.

As far as water shield: I agree that Water Shield is far, far too much mana *when it works* and far too little mana *when it doesn't*. The issue is: Shaman are balanced around the idea that Water Shield WILL give you mana back, just as Priests are balanced around the idea that you WILL be able to mana burn someone.

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Your right, I did not state those to forms of CC, however they pale in comparison to Druid CC and Shock is only useful on certain classes, as you said. With the state of arena, and cleave teams... well its not as good as it looks.

Edit: Priests have better mana return, better efficiency -and- Mana Burn. I don't mind losing the mana battle in a fight if I get mana burned. I HATE losing the mana battle when I -drink-, use my restorations, do not let a single mana burn land and I still am OOM before the priest. Notice a problem? I think mana burn would be fair if you HAD to use it to win the battle, not the other way around.

9. What was the point of shifting the cooldown/debuff timer or Sated and Bloodlust/heroism. I mean really what did that do? Not very many fights last 5 mintues so wtf? (PVE)


This one I can answer. It is for wipes. 5 min cool down on BL will be up if you wipe and sated is gone on death. That way if you wipe you can GL the next try and if you succeed it should be ready for the next boss fight. Correct me if I am wrong Blues, I would also love a comment about how awesome I am if you can fit it in. My sig would be the heat ;)